1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method, system, and program for processing a file request.
2. Description of the Related Art
In shared computing environments, application programs are often used to provide data protection, storage space management, and security. For instance, certain storage management applications may be used to maintain mirrored back-up copies of files and data. Such applications will often block access to a file that is in the process of being mirrored until the initial mirror copy operation is complete. Mission critical applications that require immediate acknowledgment when accessing a file may experience problems if delays occur while waiting to access the file subject to the mirror copy relationship that is being initially copied to the mirror file. Additional application programs may be provided to provide data security and space management. Storage management applications typically utilize customized graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and application program interfaces (APIs) to interface with the operating system to perform archival related operations. Users may have to undergo significant training to learn to use these different application programs, which are often complex especially in enterprise computing environments, to perform the different storage management operations, such as data protection, security, and space management. Moreover, to manage and perform the different storage management operations, users must actively invoke and use the installed applications that may often consume significant computing resources and require dedicated hardware and software components, such as databases.